Starting immediately, Deutsche Post is offsetting any unavoidable CO₂ emissions due to mail transport with investments in internationally recognized and certified climate protection projects at no extra charge.

For the last ten years, DHL has transported all parcels for private customers with its climate-friendly “GoGreen” service. Up until now, the GoGreen option was subject to a charge and only available to business customers with a shipping volume of at least 50,000 items per year. Deutsche Post’s new policy now makes letter mail more climate friendly for private customers as well.

For the roughly 6.5 billion letters handled by Deutsche Post’s letter mail operations in 2020, this would translate into an offset of more than 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. For domestic advertising mail and press products, customers still have the option of ordering GoGreen as an additional service.

Climate protection is a core focus issue for Deutsche Post. Already today we have, by far, the largest fleet of electric delivery vans, electric-powered bicycles and cargo bikes providing the industry’s most climate-friendly mail and parcel delivery service. And for years, our parcel customers have responded very positively to the climate-friendly shipping we have provided for all private-customer parcels. Now we are introducing this to our mail operations as well and making our entire mail transport greener. This also helps our business customers make their mail correspondence with end customers greener.

—Ole Nordhoff, Chief Marketing Officer at Deutsche Post

Since 2007, Deutsche Post and DHL have offered their GoGreen service as a way to offset—through certified climate protection projects—the CO₂ emissions generated by their shipping operations. For the past ten years, every private-customer parcel shipped within Germany has automatically been shipped “GoGreen”. This latest measure—to offset CO₂ emissions for the transport of all letter mail items automatically—is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group’s ambitious sustainability program aimed at achieving zero-emission logistics by the year 2050.

Already, Deutsche Post DHL delivers mail and parcels carbon-free in more than 50% of its delivery districts, making it by far Germany’s most climate-friendly logistics provider. In addition, the Group’s Post & Parcel Germany division continues to expand its fleet of electric vehicles, to invest in the construction of carbon-neutral operations facilities, and to upgrade existing buildings.

The division also plans to increase continuously the share of parcels shipped via greener transport modes such as rail and biogas-powered trucks. It also plans to expand its GoGreen product portfolio in 2022 with products that will allow customers to play an active role in CO₂ avoidance in Germany.